“I saw him five minutes ago,” the sergeant stated calmly.
Raising a hand, Mitchum brought the riders to a halt a short distance from the front door.
“Open the gate, Sergeant Whyte.”
“Sure thing, sir!” the man said, lowering his blaster to point at them. “Be glad to, just as soon as your new friends back away.”
“Better do as he asks,” Mitchum told the others. “And don’t draw a blaster or he’ll shoot without warning.”
“Tight security,” Ryan said, noting the placement of the guards. “Must have a lot of enemies.”
“Not anymore.”
Shaking the reins, the companions walked their mounts away from the sec men and watched the group enter the ville through the door. It closed behind them. But after a few moments, the door swung open again, and Mitchum waved them inside.
Ryan took the lead, and single file the companions guided their mounts through the narrow doorway. Doc was the last, and as it thudded closed the sound reminded him of a coffin lid slamming shut. An unnerving comparison.
After the gate closed, armed sec men struggled to slide a wooden beam as thick as a horse across the portal.
Mitchum and his troopers had stopped in the middle of a street and slid off their mounts to look around the ville and clap each other on the back. It was obvious they were glad to be back home.
Sidling closer to the sec men, Ryan studied the place. Logs with steps cut into them served as a ladder to reach the walkway set along the inside of the wall. Boxes and barrels placed at regular intervals probably held ammo, arrows and such for the sec men to use in case of attack. That was smart. Ryan had seen many a ville fall because the baron kept every round of ammo in his home, and didn’t arm his guards fast enough to stop an attack.
The streets were dirt with gravel walked into the ground as protection from the rain. The ramshackle buildings were mostly trailer homes, with a few log cabins and one big structure made of brick and stone. The baron’s home, obviously. A well stood in the middle of a stone plaza, a bamboo-and-thatch roof standing guard over the precious clean water. A door stood wide on a blacksmith shop, tan men pounding iron on an anvil made of stone, and a thick waxy smell came from a tiny van whose chassis was sunk into the ground, smoke rising from a vent in the roof and rows of candles hanging from a clothesline to cool and harden in the sea breeze. And looming darkly over the ville was a row of gallows, the light-color palm-tree wood stained with blood.
From somewhere there came the steady crack of a whip, followed by an anguished cry. The noise continued, with the cries becoming weaker.
Straggling in, a crowd of people was forming in the street to greet Mitchum and his troops. The locals were dressed in the usual assortment of homemade hides and bits of predark junk. Many wore sandals cut from tires, and there were lots of vests and skirts made from shag carpeting. An old man was smoking a wooden pipe, and a young girl was suckling a newborn in her arms.
Suddenly, the crowd parted for a big man in shiny boots and tight denim pants worn light blue at the knees. The big man was shirtless, revealing his hairy chest and massive muscles with long arms that nearly reached his knees. Mildred thought he looked like an ape, the man was so simian in nature. As the only person carrying a blaster, he had to be the baron. The weapon was a .22 revolver, small cartridges filling half the loops lining his rainbow-colored belt. Some sort of lizard skin, the physician assumed.
Covertly, J.B. and Ryan exchanged looks. If that was what the baron carried, then the man would happily chill them to get his hands on the .357 Colt Magnum or the Uzi machine pistol.
As the ape man came closer, Mitchum and his troops quickly stood in a rough line.
“Sir!” they chorused and snapped salutes.
He tried not to show it, but Ryan was impressed. He hadn’t seen disciplined troops since the Shiloh slave camp of that crazy whitecoat.